A rare phone call from Mom at work and right away I know something is very wrong by the sound of her mono-tone voice. A ton of bricks falls. Her sister - my aunt & godmother - is in the hospital stricken with myeloma. Thanksgiving and she had just returned from trip to Italy with complaints of rib pain. Today she requires a transfusion everyday just to survive. Plasma cells have grown out of control inside her bones causing them to fracture. Organs are enlarged. Her days are spent with pain and morphine. Waves of heat over my face and down my spine and suddenly the worries & peeves of yesterday no longer have any significance.